Leaving Literature Behind

The professionalization of the field is turning students off

By Bruce Fleming

The major victory of professors of literature in the last
half-century — the Great March from the New Criticism through
structuralism, deconstruction, Foucauldianism, and
multiculturalism — has been the invention and codification of
a professionalized study of literature. We've made ourselves into a
priestly caste: To understand literature, we tell students, you
have to come to us. Yet professionalization is a pyrrhic victory:
We've won the battle but lost the war. We've